


Noël

by sp00kymulder



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, It’s Rhodey’s birthday!, PTSD, Steve is concerned, Time for Therapy, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark is not okay, Tony has a bad day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 18:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13129083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sp00kymulder/pseuds/sp00kymulder
Summary: Tony ends up talking to a psychiatrist on Christmas Eve. It’s a long story.Based on the West Wing episode of the same name.





	Noël

“Mr Stark, it’s good to meet you. Come on in,” Dr Haig said as he stepped aside to allow Tony into the SHIELD meeting room. 104-6B. Tony’s new least-favourite meeting room.

“There’s been some kind of mistake, Doc, I’m not entirely sure why I’m here. Let’s be clear that I only agreed to this so that Fury gets his form signed and I get back on the team.”

Dr Haig smiled and nodded briefly. “Of course, Mr Stark.”

The room, like most rooms at SHIELD, was decorated in a way that could generously be described as _maximum security chic_. The metal table in the centre was bolted to the floor and was surrounded by two chairs that appeared to have been designed by someone not accustomed to comfort or style. A small, sad, non-denominational holiday tree sat incongruously in one corner. _That’s honestly worse than if they hadn’t bothered_ , thought Tony as he took a seat facing the door.

There were a few beats of silence as Tony and Dr Haig appraised one another. Dr Haig was a tall man who looked around Tony’s age. He wore round glasses slightly further down his nose than was strictly necessary, and a well-tailored suit clearly indicative of wealth. _This guy must be good_ , Tony decided.

“So Mr Stark–”

“Look let me stop you there. If I’m going to do this you might as well call me Tony. Mr Stark sounds like we’re doing an interview. If you’re going to make me talk about my feelings and shit I really don’t want to feel like this is going to print.”

Dr Haig smiled. Never a good sign. Tony wondered if he’d said something that had given him away already. He sat back in his chair and forcibly relaxed his shoulders. His eyes briefly darted over to the door before settling on the area just above Dr Haig’s right shoulder. His hand hurt. He flexed his fingers slightly and felt the wound under the bandage twinge a little.

“Alright then Tony, let’s get started. Why do you think you’re here?”

That wasn’t the opener Tony had been expecting. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t caught slightly off guard. Why was he here? That was a big question to answer. He honestly wasn’t sure of the exact reason. He had a long mental list of reasons he probably _should_ have been there, but none he was willing to share with this guy. 

“Well doc, if I had to guess I’d say it was because my dictator– oh I’m sorry, of course I mean my director, Fury has decided that I have some kind of issue. Obviously, I disagree, and I think it’s fairly clear that his suspicions are unfounded. I’m doing great.” Dr Haig raised a single eyebrow. _Well that’s just cliche_ , Tony thought.

“Do you want to tell me about what happened last week? Starting December 14th. Anything of note that you’d be willing to share? Is that when you hurt your hand?” Dr Haig clearly believed he was on to something here. He was right. Tony’s heart rate increased noticeably. He felt himself begin to sweat.

“Of course. December 14th is the birthday of my very best friend and teammate Colonel James Rhodes. A.K.A War Machine, in case you weren’t aware. Is that what you were alluding to?”

“Cut the crap Tony. We both know that isn’t what I meant. You can share with me or not, I don’t care, but Iron Man isn’t being reinstated until you do.” Dr Haig managed to deliver what was essentially a threat without a single hint of malice. _Do they teach that at shrink school, or does it just come naturally?_ , Tony wondered. He sat up slightly, glancing back at the door again and considering his response. 

Of course, Tony knew exactly what Dr Haig was referring to. He wasn’t thrilled by the idea of sharing his story, but it was quickly becoming apparent that this guy was more astute than he had initially appeared. It was quite possible that the only way out was through, in this instance. He caved. 

“Fine. I got up late that day since Jarvis– he’s my assistant– decided I needed more sleep. That’s not his call, but whatever. I’d been in the workshop late the night before.”

————

Tony awoke with a start, heart hammering in his chest, breathing heavy. He glanced at the clock and sighed.

“Jarvis what the fuck? I said eight. It’s after ten!” Tony yelled into the air when he realised how much later he’d slept than he’d meant to. 

“Sir, you left the workshop this morning at 0613. It would have been irresponsible of me to allow you to return so soon without proper rest. 1030 seemed a reasonable compromise.” Tony wasn’t sure when Jarvis learned how to sound _smug_ , but he had. He made a mental note to make some changes to his personality profile, knowing that he never actually would. He secretly loved it.

Tony groaned and pushed back the comforter. It was... damp? Sweaty. He checked the thermostat– 63 degrees. It wasn’t even warm.

He showered and stripped the sheets off the bed. He didn’t actually need to do that himself, but he didn’t want the cleaning staff knowing which bed the sheets came from. All the laundry goes to a central repository, so in theory they could be anyone’s. He briefly considered the idea that this was too much caution to cover up _sweat_ , something which on its own isn’t particularly damning. That was his M.O. these days. Too much caution.

He toyed with the idea of breakfast, but decided that just coffee would do. Lots of coffee. He had only been awake for 30 minutes but already the lack of sleep was catching up with him. Maybe Jarvis was right. 

In the kitchen there were always other Avengers to be found. Anywhere there was food at least one member of the team was usually nearby. That also meant there was almost always coffee already prepared. A handy side-effect of having an entire tower of people who don’t sleep as much as people really should. 

“Good morning your highness. Is this breakfast or lunch?” Clint made an over-exaggerated bowing gesture, almost knocking Steve’s mug off the counter. He saved it just in time. Tony rolled his eyes.

“It’s eleven A.M. That’s not even late. Some of us need our beauty sleep, Barton. Something you evidently wouldn’t understand.” Clint put his hand over his heart in mock offence.

Steve gave Tony a weird look that he wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret. Somewhere between exasperated fondness and concern. Tony couldn’t understand how Steve had so many expressions on hand. He was pretty sure he couldn’t convey both of those feelings with one facial movement. He tilted his head questioningly in response. 

“I’m not sure you got much beauty sleep last night, Tony. I have it on good authority that you didn’t go to bed until after some of us were already up,” Steve said faux-nonchalantly as he got up to put his rescued mug in the sink. 

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware the sleep police have been out recruiting recently. What are you doing checking up on my bedtime?”

Steve hesitated briefly at the sink, his back to Tony and Clint. When he turned back he looked a little embarrassed, a little sad. Another of his composite expressions that Tony was sure he couldn’t replicate. He never responded. 

“Hey we’re about to start a movie in the den if you wanna join,” said Clint as he seemingly effortlessly balanced six bowls of whatever he’d been making and started towards the movie room. “Some documentary, not sure what it’s about. Thor picked it.”

“I don’t want to see that documentary about tickling again if that’s what he’s picked. Twice is enough, he’s not getting me again.” Tony followed Clint through the large living area towards the den, Steve close behind. No one offered to help Clint carry the snacks; it was too fascinating to watch him do it alone. _Circus folk_ , thought Tony as Clint managed to open the door to the cinema room without spilling anything, _How do they even figure out they can do these things?_

Most of the rest of the Avengers were waiting not-so-patiently for the snacks to arrive so they could play the movie. A sarcastic cheer went around the room when Clint entered.

The team weren’t so much sitting on the furniture as they were draped across it, with no one looking anything short of _totally chill_. Tony immediately saw an opportunity for mischief. 

“Wait a second,” Tony raised his hand to point exaggeratedly at Rhodey, who was lounging in the armchair with the best view of the television. His shoulders quickly tensed and he turned to glare at Tony, the warning he was trying to communicate clear in his eyes. 

“Don’t you do it you bastard.”

“Why is Thor picking the movie when the _Birthday Boy_ is right here?” 

“Tony no,” Rhodey groaned, laying back and covering his face with one hand as the others in the room turned to look at him in various states of realisation and glee.

“Haaaaaaaaappy–“ Natasha’s song was cut off before it could even begin by a pillow to the face. It was too late, however. The damage had already been done. The team drew out a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ for far longer than anyone thought possible. Rhodey spent his awkward few minutes attempting to meld with his chair while glaring at his now _former_ best friend. 

“This is exactly why I never said anything,” Rhodey grumbled when it was finally over. He grabbed the remote and hit play, dimming the lights and shutting everyone up. Tony found a seat between Thor and Bruce– where the best snacks were guaranteed to be. 

The movie was about the men who staffed Mission Control during the Apollo missions. Tony wasn’t sure he’d heard the stories before, but he definitely knew the names. What kid growing up in the seventies didn’t want to be a rocket scientist? 

“I find it quite incredible that such a primitive race managed to leave their own world. It’s fascinating.” Thor probably didn’t even realise the backhandedness of his compliment, but the Earthlings in the room could understand that it came from a place of love. 

————

“And then what happened?” Dr Haig asked, leaning forward in his chair and resting his elbow on the metal table. 

“Not much, really. It was a good movie, lots of interesting facts. Amazing things, those shuttle missions.”

Dr Haig, in a move straight out of ‘How to be a Cliché Psychiatrist Weekly’, removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. 

“Tony, I can only help if you’re honest with me, and I don’t think you’re being honest with me.”

Tony glanced at the door before settling his gaze on the doctor’s glasses, which were now folded and placed on the table. He didn’t really see a way out of this. The world needed Iron Man. He needed to be back out there saving people, protecting his friends. He knew he needed to tell Dr Haig the truth, but the truth was a difficult story. Tony himself didn’t really understand what was totally relevant and what wasn’t. 

“I didn’t like the movie.”

————

Tony was unable to look away from the screen. His palms had begun to sweat, his breathing getting slightly quicker. _What the hell is happening to me?_ he thought as the large cinema display showed a CGI recreation of the rocket passing behind the moon and losing contact with Earth.

He tried to focus, listening to the words of James Lovell describing what that was like, but he couldn’t hear anything being said over the sound of the blood rushing around his head. The image on the screen was barely visible at this point, blurring more and more with each accelerated breath. 

_Someone must have noticed,_ he thought, seeing that the light from the arc reactor was changing the shadows nearby at a pace far quicker than normal breathing. _I need to leave– I have to get out of here– I–.”_ He felt tears begin to form in the corners of his eyes. He still didn’t know what the hell was the matter, and he couldn’t figure it out through his incoherent racing thoughts. _I need to go–_

“Coffee,” he choked out as he stood shakily and made his way quickly to the door. He tripped over a couple of limbs on the way, but otherwise thought he did a stellar job of looking like a person as he freaked out internally. No one in the room even really seemed to notice. Steve shifted around a little, but he was probably just searching for more snacks. 

He shut the door to the cinema room behind him and leaned against it, catching his breath. His vision began to clear, his hearing returned mostly to normal, and he had absolutely no understanding of what the hell just happened to him or why. 

He went to get coffee. 

————

Tony was in the lab, tinkering with a few bits and pieces while not really paying too much attention, when the call to assemble came in. He was up and ready to go in minutes, soaring off the platform of Stark Tower, waiting for more information on the incident. 

Steve’s voice came across the comms shortly after. “Avengers, looks like we’ve got a guy downtown in some kind of homemade mech suit. No apparent magical power.”

Jarvis showed Tony several map beacons, indicating both the real-time locations of the other Avengers and the apparent bad guy. He would have spotted the latter even without Jarvis’ help, the damage was already clearly visible, a plume of smoke rising from a spot downtown. 

“Iron Man here, heading there now. I’m gonna try and catch him by surprise, check out the tech, see what we’re working with.”

“Alright, report in when you’re on scene, we’ll meet you there,” Steve replied.

Tony spotted the other Avengers on the map making their way to the damaged area. He engaged the suit’s thrusters and did the same. 

He was almost at a point where he would have eyes on the guy when Jarvis chimed in. “Sir, I’m detecting an unusually elevated heart rate. 140 beats per minute. Perhaps it is unwise to be heading into battle.” He hadn’t noticed at first, but he could feel it in his chest, next to the reactor. He felt fine though. He ignored it. 

The battle didn’t last long. It was a pretty confusing one. The guy didn’t seem to want to put up much of a fight once the Avengers had arrived. Most bad guys wait for the Avengers to get there to really get started. 

He was in a suit clearly of his own design, cobbled together from whatever he could find. It wasn’t dissimilar to an Iron Man suit, just way _worse_. It certainly didn’t look sturdy or like it was built to last. _Box of scraps,_ Tony thought. He knew what that looked like.

The guy didn’t even have a faceplate on, and when Tony got in close enough he couldn’t immediately understand the expression on the guy’s face. He looked... blank? Like he wasn’t really there in the moment for this fight. His eyes glistened with what could only be tears, and he had the general air of someone who didn’t really want to be there. If he hadn’t been actively shooting some kind of homemade energy weapon at Tony and the surrounding area Tony would have thought that maybe they had the wrong guy and the suit was just a coincidence. 

He’d done a lot of damage to the nearby buildings, and regardless of how he appeared he was still fighting. Captain America gave orders to flank him and try to disable the energy weapon, a plan which looked like it was going to work when War Machine and Iron Man closed in. The battle didn’t require their intervention to end, however.

Tony was close enough to see the guy’s face even more clearly at that point, and what he saw was Not Good. The guy was practically sobbing– not typical super villain behaviour– and was frantically moving switches on the arm of his suit. He looked directly at Tony and shook his head when he flipped the last switch. 

His suit exploded.

————

“I remember reading about that incident in the paper. I was in the UK at the time, so I wasn’t here when it all went down,” Dr Haig interjected when Tony reached the end of the battle story.

“So what about this day, this battle in particular do you think was the issue. Was there anything special about that guy?”

“Uh, no,” Tony replied absentmindedly. He was a little lost in thought, not entirely listening to Dr Haig. He started tapping his index and middle fingers on his leg as he decided where to go next with the story.

“Are you sure about that? I think there’s something about this guy that bothered you.”

Tony shook his head a little to clear his thoughts, present in the room once more. Dr Haig was looking at him expectantly. 

“No, there was something, but it’s dumb.”

Dr Haig sighed, “Tony, I can guarantee you that I will not find it dumb. If it’s the first thing you think of when I ask that question, then it’s probably worth sharing.”

Tony tried to forcibly relax his shoulders once more, not realising how long they had been tense for. They had been practically at his ears. He took a deep breath.

“When we finish a mission, we have to write up reports. Fury makes us do them. Like a “retroactively justify your actions so SHIELD is not legally liable for damages” sort of deal. Bureaucracy’s a joy. So I had Jarvis do some research on our Villain of the Day.”

————

“The man’s name was Kurt Coleman. Thirty eight years old, former United States Air Force. He was honourably discharged six months ago.” Jarvis’ voice rang out slightly too loud over the speaker.

Tony hadn’t moved since returning from the battle. He lay across the sofa in the lab, head hanging over the arm closest to the door. The battle– if it could even be called a battle– replaying over and over again in his mind. _What just happened? Why did he do that? He must know the Avengers don’t kill people, he can’t have done it to escape._

“Anything worth noting? Anything that could tell us why the hell he just kil–” Tony took a breath and closed his eyes tight “–did that, right in front of us?”

“According to his personnel file, he was a prisoner of war in Afghanistan for four months in 2013. Nothing else out of the ordinary, sir. Should I continue looking? Sir? Are you alright? I’m seeing the same unusually elevated heart rate as earlier.”

Tony could feel his heartbeat high in his throat. It was like every part of his body was pulsing with it. A POW. In Afghanistan. In 2013. Built himself a suit. Blew it up. This meant nothing. Nothing at all. 

He went to get coffee. 

––––––––

Up in the main kitchen, Tony once again found Steve and Clint. _It’s like they live here or something_. Steve was cooking this time, with a checkered towel draped over his huge shoulder. Whatever he was making smelled amazing and served to remind Tony that he’d not actually eaten anything all day. He’d never managed to get snacks during the movie earlier. 

“Hey Tony, everything alright? You kind of disappeared straight after the call-out earlier. Fury wants to know what the hell happened with that guy. I do too to be honest. Never had a mission like it.” Steve said as he shook his head in confusion.

“Yeah, everything’s fine, I’m just super busy is all. The suit. Keeps me occupied.” Tony chuckled a little. Nervous. Tony was by all accounts an excellent liar, but there was no way anyone was buying that. He was talking too fast. He caught his reflection in the mirror on the other side of the room and he saw how bedraggled he looked. He hadn’t said anything to anyone after the explosion. Turned off his comm, hightailed it out of the area and came straight back to the tower.

Clint and Steve were both giving him strange looks. He felt a little trapped.

“Sure Tony, what kinds of modifications are you working on? Any crazy new designs on the horizon? Is the suit going to be stored in your contact lenses next?” Clint asked casually, mincing garlic with impressive speed and precision. The question seemed genuine, not trying to trip him up, but Tony couldn’t help but feel like Clint was trying to imply something.

“Jesus Christ Clint, what’s with the questions?! Why does everyone want to know how I am?! What’s with the sudden interest in my work?!” Tony knew he was yelling, and he knew it was inappropriate to be yelling, and he knew that he didn’t know why he was yelling.

Clint raised both his hands in mock surrender. “Sorry man, just curious. Sorry I asked.” He made meaningful eye contact with Steve and returned to his chopping. 

––––––––

“So you yelled at your friends?” Dr Haig’s question irritated Tony. The way he asked it implied he thought this fact was _very interesting_ , in a way that is only _very interesting_ to shrinks. 

“Yeah. Why?”

“Did you get the impression by this point that your friends were worried about you?”

Tony sighed. He shifted around in his chair while considering his answer, fiddling with the bandage on his injured hand. He could see it had started bleeding again and was beginning to soak through. Great.

Did he get that impression? He supposed he did. He noticed the little looks Steve and Clint were giving each other. He knew they probably thought it was weird that he yelled at them out of absolutely nowhere. But did he think they were _concerned_? He wasn’t sure. 

“I don’t know, okay? Are you going to explain at any point in this ‘assessment’-” he put the word _assessment_ in very sarcastic air quotes- “why you’re getting me to tell you the story of my day? You want to hear how I was an asshole to my friends so you can write it down in your notes and send them off to Fury?”

Dr Haig ignored Tony’s words. Instead he cleared his throat and said calmly, “I’d like you to tell me how you hurt your hand.” 

“What? Oh, I slipped when I was messing around with the suit.” Tony replied a little too quickly to be convincing. 

Dr Haig raised an eyebrow.

––––––––

Steve continued to shoot Tony complicated looks while he finished cooking his vat of pasta sauce. Tony had taken a seat at the breakfast bar with a cup of coffee in one of Thor’s ridiculous hipster mason jars.

“So are you joining us for dinner Tony? You like this stuff, right? It’s Rhodey’s favourite, that’s why we made it. Lucky it doesn’t take long to prepare, since we didn’t have much notice for making a birthday meal.” Steve chuckled. He tasted the sauce once more before letting out a satisfied hum and going to grab plates.

“Uh, yeah. If.. if that’s alright.” Tony didn’t know why he said that. He should have just said yes. Why would it not be alright to come to your own best friend’s birthday meal?

“Of course, Tony.” Steve smiled and passed a couple of the now filled plates to Clint to take to the table, where apparently the other Avengers were waiting. Tony took some too. 

Through in the dining area Tony saw that his teammates had made themselves busy following the battle, hanging a “Happy Birthday” banner and getting helium balloons. _He’s like 45, not 6,_ Tony thought cynically. Part of him was pleased that his earlier troublemaking had worked, though. Rhodey would hate this. 

The Colonel, however, took it in his stride. He seemed to have gotten over his earlier protests and decided to enjoy his over-the-top celebrations. The second round of _Happy Birthday_ of the day didn’t even involve any glaring.

When the meal was over, everyone was full, happy, and slightly drunk. Tony made his way back down to the lab to actually start some of the suit modifications he lied about earlier. 

“Jarvis, where’s my good soldering iron? I can only see the shi- Ow fuck!” In his distracted state searching for the lost item he had managed to slice his palm open on one of the metal sheets resting against his main worktop, and–

––––––––

“Tony we both know that’s bullshit.”

Tony rolled his eyes. 

“Is it? So what’s my diagnosis, doc? Chronic assholery for which there is no known cure? An obsession with right angles due to my latent desire for my mother? What is it?”

“Tony, you have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Dr Haig stated simply.

Tony paused briefly, caught totally off-guard. “Uh, that doesn’t sound like something they let you have if you’re an Avenger. Can it be something else? You got that from me telling you the story of my Thursday?” Tony looked up at Dr Haig, seeing his amusement. 

“No, I got that from the first five minutes of meeting you. You’re kind of a textbook case.”

Tony was honestly offended. He didn’t want a diagnosis at all, but if he was going to receive one he would at least prefer it to be special and different. 

“The Battle of New York.” Dr Haig said. Tony flinched.

“What about it?”

“That would have been pretty traumatic for any person, fighting an alien enemy previously unseen by mankind. I know my office got pretty busy in the months following with people who didn’t even fight in it. But for you in particular, I’m honestly impressed you’ve gone this long without showing symptoms. Flying through a rift in space-time carrying an armed nuke? I can’t even imagi–“

“Please stop,” Tony gasped, eyes flitting back and forth. He couldn’t seem to get enough air, just like in the cinema room, but he felt almost frozen in his chair this time. He couldn’t, or didn’t want to move.

Dr Haig watched with concern as Tony tried to compose himself. This clearly hadn’t been the outcome he had intended.

“Tony you need to get to a point where you can be reminded you of your traumatic experience without reliving it,” he said softly, “that’s the goal here.”

Tony had managed to return to the present, slowing his breathing, and hearing most of what Dr Haig had said. _That sounds real easy to say when it’s not happening to you_ , he thought. He closed his eyes for a moment as he felt the last vestiges of panic leave him. 

“Now Tony, how did you hurt your hand?”

––––––––

The meal was enjoyable, but Tony felt unsettled. Like his skin didn’t fit right. If he was being honest he’d been feeling this way most of the day, particularly since getting back from the fight.

He mechanically lifted pasta from his plate to his mouth, not really tasting it. He didn’t really have much of an appetite, but it provided something to do so he didn’t have to try to converse while he was so preoccupied with his own thoughts.

Everything about today just felt _weird_. It felt weird to wake up from your ninth night of nightmares in a row, it felt weird to freak out in the middle of a documentary for no apparent reason, it felt weird to have someone fucking die right in front of you then have all your friends carry on and have a birthday party like everything is fucking normal and you’re the only one losing your goddamn mind about it and it felt weird that you can’t feel your fingertips and you’re definitely crying and–

“Tony are you okay?” It was Natasha who asked this time, sitting one space to Tony’s left. She might as well have been half a galaxy away as far as Tony was concerned. Her voice sounded muffled to his ears.

He could see the portal in front of his eyes, just as clearly as he could the day of the Battle of New York. He could see himself going through it and he could see it closing and he could see himself running out of air and dying while his friends– and the whole goddamn world– were destroyed by Loki and his Chitauri and whatever was controlling them.

He was back in the lab. He wasn’t sure how he got there, or what had happened in the last few minutes, or hours, or, oh God, what time was it?

He sensed something coming towards him. He couldn’t tell exactly what it was but he knew it was A Threat to him- chitauri maybe, might be something worse. He pushed forward with both hands and began trying in vain to get whatever it was to leave him alone and not hurt him and–

He felt a sharp pain in his palm. It hurt like a bitch, but it was grounding. He blinked a few times, chest heaving with the air he was gulping in. The danger he was so sure was immediately in front of him had been DUM-E– blood smeared across some of his casing. Tony’s hand was bleeding. A lot. 

This was bad. 

––––––––

“And that’s it. I have no more truth to give.” Tony leaned on the table, head resting on both arms. He felt exhausted. 

“What about the guy from the battle that day? The one who blew himself up?” Dr Haig asked. Tony felt uncomfortable, once again unsure of where this was going and why.

“What about him?”

“Did you never find out why he did what he did?”

“Uh, no. It seems like he just... snapped one day. Built himself a suit and decided to, uh, commit suicide by Avenger, I guess. He, uh. He got back from Afgha–” his breath caught in his throat again thinking about it- “Afghanistan, and he built an Iron Man suit.”

“Just like you did. So you thought that, maybe, if you both had this shared experience, that perhaps you might be suicidal too? Is that it?”

Tony felt smaller than he had felt in a long time. He wasn’t sure how to respond to the question. He’d already told this guy more than he would ever typically be comfortable with, but that just seemed like a step too far. He looked down at the bandage on his palm and didn’t respond. 

Dr Haig’s voice felt too loud when it broke the near-silence in the room. “So I have a colleague who works out of New York full time I think you’ll like. I’ll email you his details. I would recommend you give him a call.”

“Wait, what? I thought you were supposed to be fixing me? I like you, I’d rather keep seeing _you_. What if another former POW builds an Iron Man suit and blows himself up in front of me tomorrow?”

Dr Haig chuckled, “Tony it wasn’t him who set you off, though he certainly didn’t help. You’d been cooking for a lot longer than that. Since–“

“Thor’s documentary.” Tony realised right away. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t pieced it together sooner. Vivid descriptions of being outside of comms range behind the moon, mortal peril in the vast vacuum of space. He was an idiot. 

“So you’ll give my guy a call? This is definitely bearable, Tony. You don’t have to deal with this on your own. Talk to your friends, let them help you out.” Dr Haig had pushed his chair out from under the table and was already preparing to leave. 

“Okay, fine, enough shrink talk. I’ll call.”

––––––––

They exited the building together, but parted ways at the door, where Steve and Rhodey were waiting, laughing about something. 

“Merry Christmas, Tony,” Dr Haig called as he headed in the direction of the parking lot.

“Yeah, you too.” Tony gave a brief little wave and walked over to meet Rhodey and Steve.

 _Either they have fantastic timing or they’ve been waiting here an embarrassing amount of time,_ Tony thought with amusement.

“Hey. So I guess I owe you guys some explanations. He diagnosed me with a fear of rectangles. Incurable. That’s why I’ve been weird lately.”

Rhodey chuckled, putting his arm around Tony’s shoulder and giving him an awkward but affectionate hug. “Oh, you’ve been weird? We didn’t notice.”

“In all seriousness though Tony we’re glad you’ve finally talked to someone. I was getting pretty worried about you, we all were.” Steve had to ruin the jovial Christmas Eve spirit with a serious note. Typical.

“Yeah, it’s... going to be okay, I think? Not like, right away, but Dr Haig has agreed to sign Fury’s dumb form to stay on the team– also don’t think I don’t know it was you assholes who caused this whole thing with Fury by the way– as long as I talk to a licensed shrink who isn’t Jarvis. Quite frankly I think that’s AI-ist. Jarvis can be anything he wants to be.”

Rhodey and Steve laughed as they began to walk away from SHIELD, ready to head back to the tower for Christmas. Rhodey took the opportunity to lecture Tony on proper wound care and how he was definitely going to get tetanus from the gaping hole in his hand that probably needed stitches and yada yada yada.

Tony would never admit it to anyone, but he but was extremely grateful for the friends he had, even when they lectured him about hurting himself, and even though he had definitely forgotten to get any of them a Christmas present. 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Sorry this is so shit. I had the idea for a Noël-based fic involving Tony, but I’m not a writer so I tried haha - if you read the whole thing, thank you!
> 
> 2\. Some of this is a completely shameful rip-off of the West Wing episode. The plot certainly is. So spoilers for that episode kinda if you haven’t seen it.


End file.
